Let’s make some guesses at boxoffice.
It’s becoming a tradition that I predict how much money a Star Wars film will make at the box office. I was pretty dead-on with The Force Awakens ($250MM Opening weekend, $2 Billion gross). I quite wrong about Rogue One’s opening weekend and total gross.
The Last Jedi seems to be its own entity at this point though. It seems visually unique and far more substantive than The Force Awakens. We’re getting some great characters to revisit – Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo Ren. And we’re finally getting Luke Skywalker, albeit a bit of a different one.
So what will all this add up to in dollars?
Are People Interested?
Of course they are. But how interested? Well, that’s hard to measure. But we could look at the number of views of its trailer in the first 24 hours as a proxy of sorts. Apparently, the last Jedi Trailer was the 5th most watch trailer in its first 24 hours ever. And by “ever” I mean since we started looking at these types of things like 3 years ago.
| Rank | Video name | Views (millions)* | Release date | Ref(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | It – Official Teaser Trailer | 197.0 | March 29, 2017 | [1] |
| 2. | The Fate of the Furious – Official Trailer | 139.0 | December 11, 2016 | [1] |
| 3. | Thor: Ragnarok – Official Teaser Trailer | 136.0 | April 10, 2017 | [2] |
| 4. | Beauty and the Beast – Official Trailer | 127.6 | November 14, 2016 | [3] |
| 5. | Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Trailer (Official) | 120.1 | October 9, 2017 | [4] |
The Benchmarks
| Film | Year | Opening 3days | US Gross $MM | World Gross $MM |
| Batman v Superman | 2016 | $ 166 | $ 330 | $ 873 |
| Suicide Squad | 2016 | $ 133 | $ 325 | $ 745 |
| Jurrasic World | 2015 | $ 208 | $ 649 | $ 1,656 |
| Avengers Age of Ultron | 2015 | $ 191 | $ 485 | $ 1,402 |
| The Hobbit | 2012 | $ 84 | $ 303 | $ 1,021 |
| The Avengers | 2012 | $ 207 | $ 623 | $ 1,519 |
| Star Wars Episode I | 1998 | $ 64 | $ 474 | $ 1,027 |
| Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens | 2015 | $ 248 | $ 936 | $2,068 |
| Rogue One | 2016 | $155 | $532 | $1,056 |
These are impressive numbers from The Force Awakens. But we also have to take into account that a lot of that $248Million came from marathon ticket sales. So you have to grade this with a bit of a curve.
My Prediction
The Lat Jedi appears to be an excellent film. Lucasfilm seems so happy with it that Rian Johnson is getting his own trilogy to work on. But the second installment of Star Wars trilogies tend not to do as well as box office. The Last Jedi might be different though. So my guess: $215 Million (+/- $5 Million) – the same as my guess for Rogue One. This could be difficult given what theaters have to do in order to show the film (theater count might be low). It might be low given the rather dour mood in the U.S. right now – we’re thirsty for something good. So… for it’s total theatrical release, I say it’ll break $1.7 Billion worldwide. The reason I don’t think it’ll do as well as The Force Awakens internationally and I think it’ll do comparably well to TFA in the US.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swprotocol
Star Wars Protocol 
One Reply to “”
Comments are closed.